Microsoft Office for Mac OS X sucks. Everyone knows it.
Let’s count the ways:
- It’s a system resource hog. Loading Microsoft Word takes forever. Look MS, this is a friggin’ rich text editor. You don’t need to load the entire Visual Basic for Applications runtime library in order for me to write a letter to my grandma.
- Entourage. It was supposed to be the Mac version of Outlook. Unfortunately, it’s more like Outlook’s bastard child which MS kept locked in the closet to starve. Entourage barely accomplishes its core task of being a Mac OS X Exchange client. Avoid at all costs.
- Excel for OS X isn’t as bad as Entourage, but it is a significant downgrade from the PC version. In addition to ridiculous unusable default placement of GUI elements (here’s the full version of the above thumbnail), other interface elements are simply alien. Instead of pressing F2 to edit a cell, you press Ctrl+U.
- Ctrl+U? Who in the hell invented this shit? Perhaps the Office for Mac team was sequestered on the moon during development and was only fed rice krispies, 7UP and crack.
Let’s hope the next update, Microsoft Office for Mac 2008, doesn’t suck.
kfarr 
Office 2004 for Mac isn’t a Universal Binary, which accounts for much of the slowness.
True, although I should embarrassingly admit I’m running a pre-Intel Mac so it wouldn’t make much of a difference for me.
My only basis for comparison is to contrast the loading time of Word vs. Photoshop. It’s about the same when starting from a fresh reboot. Considering Word offers about the same features as a rich text editor, its long load time (and high memory usage) don’t seem justified.
But, hey, who am I to complain? It’s not like I could design anything better. For now, I’ll just stick with TextEdit.
At least Microsoft offers a far better AppleScript support in their office suit than Apple in their iWork apps. Just remember: Numbers is not scriptable.
And the annoying and ever recurring Adobe toolbar is, well, Adobe’s fault.
In general I think that Microsoft did quite a good job with porting their office suite to the Mac. I am even quite anxious to get my hands on their new release, which will also support much improved AppleScript support (hey, they are going to ditch VBA!).
One of the things I’ve always found interesting is the perception of speed on computers. In particular, the perception is often based on how fast an application opens. Many times I saw Microsoft applications run faster on Macs, but they opened much more quickly on Windows machines. As a result, it seems like Windows machines are faster when the only thing they are faster at is opening.
Personally, I think Microsoft does this on purpose.
I don’t know. I haven’t seen the latest version of M$ Office for the Mac. What I do know is I used Office 2004 on a iMac G4 Flat panel to write my graduate thesis and it never crashed once. In fact I left the computer on for nine straight weeks, coming back from time to time to continue the dissertation and it never even hiccuped. I was hoping to use Apples suite of text and numbers editors but at that time they were not powerful enough. I needed Excel’s ability to do statistical analysis and Words ability to use math symbols from Mathlab.
Hi there! We’re requesting input (maybe Office bad on Mac) from those who may be interested.
The Usable Toolkit – a brand new project that just started at http://usable.pbwiki.com which essentially selects the best tools helpful to everyone. At the moment, we’re basically jotting down ideas, pros, cons, lists, for this important project towards the public good that has lasting value.
Whatever you decide, please let us know: eretcenter0000 (at] gmail {.} com / If no, let us know why so we can find ways to improve the project. Better yet – yes – and we can give you an invite key so you can edit it whenever you like.
So that viewers can be aware of the project and its need for help, please leave the post and tell others about it – like how the Firefox project grew because it was spread.
We All Know That Apple SUCKS BADLY But they Just keep on making more stupid stuff like iPhoto When on windows you can use Windows Photo Galery.
Mac-bashing is a lot more believable when the basher uses proper English and something worthy of noting. It seems to me that person essentially said: “Car company keeps making more stupid stuff like this great family car when you can just use a rickshaw instead.”
I have to use Word on our studio Macs and it’s a real hog. The transparent, sometimes overlapping little toolbars are an odd UI decision. I seem to remember it does take awhile to boot, but so does Acrobat so I usually just open Preview! MSN for Mac is probably the biggest kick in the guts courtesy of Windows.
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My company was a big Microsoft based operation but after vista we converted all to macs. Which we’re now more productive as far as work goes. I have about 7 macs here in my office, all Intel based and all packed to the max in ram and HD space since we’re a web design studio. I ordered the 2008 Office suite and damn. it sucks big time. Not only does it take forever to load and to top it off it takes up so much ram to use and Entourage is a joke compared to the old Outlook program. I since then ditched Micro$oft products all together and got iWorks which works fast as hell and can ready normal Word docs and Excel files. So whats up with Microsoft? Seems they like making crap software that eats ram.
office for mac sucks so much, that i rather run windows’ office in vmware fusion while i work.
i.e. it is more convenient to switch back and forth between two OS’s than to use office 2008 for mac.in office (for mac) the user interface is totally fucked, and the software in general is crippled with bugs–even with the latest updates.
to the office-for-mac lead programmer: you suck ass.
Office 2008 sucks big time. It’s slow. It lacks basic features that is available for the PC version. UI layout makes it unproductive. Entourage lacks major features compared to Outlook. The list goes on… Personally I think this is Microsoft’s way of screwing with customers who switched over to Mac.
Well 2008 is here, and it still SUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSS. I cant express my frustration, it really numbs my productivity and im starting to feel that RSI in my wrist again because of that friggin EXCELL<,, ITS SUUCCCCKKSKSKSKSSSSSSSS grraaaggghghghhghghhghg
Uh yeah, I just purchased a MacPro with 8 Cores and 16BGb RAM… essentially the top of the line of Mac and guess what… Excel 2008 is still f*in slow. Big FU Microsoft
Office 2008 for Mac is even worse than 2004 – seriously, WTF? It’s like Microsoft for Mac team really was a rent-a-coder project run by the lowest bidder. Microsoft still aren’t using Apple’s Xcode for development, and it shows in loads – almost no default UI elements are used, and all of it is ridiculously slow.
2008 was supposed to be the big saviour for Mac users from 2004 being PPC only – BUT IT IS A BLOODY JOKE.
Here’s a tip for you Microsoft: When an image is inserted into a Word document, how about rendering a reference to the image on the fly each time it is resized. 2 versions: one rendering for screen at 72dpi, and one for print at print time at 300, 600 or 1200dpi – customisable. Because, everytime a user inserts a frigging 10 megapixel jpeg only to make it a 2 inch by 1 inch squashed and horrible looking thumbnail (because there is no proportional scaling by default), they end up with the dredded ‘wheel of death’ because their poor computer is trying to render an uncompressed raw 10 megapixel image each time they scroll down the page. Seriously, a 50 megabyte letter to Mum?
Lift your game, you’re coding like lowest bidder rentacoders, not like the world’s largest software company should be expected to.
Office 2008 for Mac is even worse than 2004 – seriously, WTF? It's like Microsoft for Mac team really was a rent-a-coder project run by the lowest bidder. Microsoft still aren't using Apple's Xcode for development, and it shows in loads – almost no default UI elements are used, and all of it is ridiculously slow.
2008 was supposed to be the big saviour for Mac users from 2004 being PPC only – BUT IT IS A BLOODY JOKE.
Here's a tip for you Microsoft: When an imsge is inserted into a Word document, how about r4ndering a reference to the image on the fly each time it is resized. 2 versions: one rendering for screen at 72dpi, and one for print at print time at 300, 600 or 1200dpi – customisable. Because, everytime a user inserts a frigging 10 megapixel jpeg only to make it a 2 inch by 1 inch squashed and horrible looking thumbnail (because there is no proportional scaling by default), they end up with the dredded 'wheel of death' because their poor computer is trying to render an uncompressed raw 10 megapixel image each time they scroll down the page. Seriously, a 50 megabyte letter to Mum?
Lift your game, you're codiny like lowest bidder rentacoders, not like the world's largest software company should be expected to.;
anybody know how to get rid of the FUCKING SHITTY ASS “toolbox” in office 2008 and stick all the useful tools in the toolbar (like in windows) ? thanks
who the hell thought it was a good idea to change the UI in a more cumbersome and less productive way? no really?
Once in a while Word 2008 hangs while it laboriously “optimizes fonts” or something. This takes such a long time that, by the time Word is finally ready, I have already opened Bean and written down my idea.
If I wait for Word, I’m likely to forget what I wanted to write down.
The slow loading of Word makes it impractical for creative thinkers, unless they remember to start Word whenever they start their machines, and plan to leave time for it to finish loading.
For those who complain Word for being suck on Mac and still stick with it. If you still use it, that proves that’s Mac OS X instead which sucks soo much that doesn’t have a good-enough office software. Ha, when I think about software on Mac, I find Mac users is soo poor. Also with their one-button mouse, that you have to use for every single operation. And check, the position of the Command key on their keyboard is really a stupid idea, whatever you use the thumb or the little finger, you have to twist your hand to make a combination. That is really against ego.
OFCOURSE mac sucks we all know this cop a PC sun